


Assigned Permanent Companionship Units

by iammemyself



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24410179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: Every robot manufactured in Claptrap’s universe gets an assigned permanent companionship unit and, despite all signs to the contrary, he has one too.  Unfortunately, not only is she a piece of work he doesn’t want to spend two minutes with, much less forever, she lives in an entirely different universe.  One that doesn’t HAVE soulmates... (Soulmate AU).
Relationships: Claptrap (Borderlands)/GLaDOS
Comments: 7
Kudos: 8





	Assigned Permanent Companionship Units

**Portal/Borderlands: Assigned Permanent Companionship Units**

**By Indiana**

**Characters: Claptrap, GLaDOS [ClapDOS]**

**Synopsis: Every robot manufactured in Claptrap’s universe gets an assigned permanent companionship unit and, despite all signs to the contrary, he has one too. Unfortunately, not only is she a piece of work he doesn’t want to spend two minutes with, much less forever, she lives in an entirely different universe. One that doesn’t HAVE soulmates... (Soulmate AU)**

  
  


He’d been searching for her his whole life.

Not just on his home turf, either. No no no. Claptrap had been scouring the six galaxies for his Assigned Permanent Companionship Unit ever since he’d opened up the text file that told him who she was. Normally this file included the model name and number of his designated unit, which made it pretty easy once you’d narrowed them down by the factory they’d been built at, but all Claptrap’s had read was one incredibly frustrating line:

**Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System [GLaDOS]**

Now, Claptrap spent most of his free time on the ECHONet. And nowhere anywhere could he find so much as a  _ reference  _ to a GLaDOS. He couldn’t even find anything that told him what a GLaDOS was, what it was used for, or who manufactured them. That  _ probably  _ meant she was a prototype, which was equal parts awesome and sucky. How was he supposed to find a  _ prototype _ ? For all he knew, she was sitting deactivated in a factory somewhere and he was  _ never _ going to find her! The only thing that  _ stopped _ him from thinking that was the fact that she had no model number. All she had was a name. Prototypes got numbered before they got named, and that was a fact. So  _ because  _ she’d been named, she totally did exist and was operational  _ somewhere _ . Figuring that out, though, was proving impossible. He’d been giving up off and on for a while now.

Until he learned there was a  _ seventh _ galaxy.

It was very,  _ very _ far away, and the one planet that had life on it was apparently in the middle of being curb-stomped in a super one-sided intergalactic war. Not exactly where he was hoping to find his soulmate. It was looking increasingly likely that she was already dead. But hell. He had nothing else to do today, so heading across the solar system to maybe or maybe not find his future girlfriend was as good a use of his time as any.

There wasn’t much info on the planet on account of how ass-backwards it was, but what he  _ did  _ find wasn’t giving him a lot of hope. Pandora had surpassed all the native tech  _ decades  _ ago. So wherever she was, she was probably rusting out in a desert somewhere, so old that she was still taking punch cards. So old she wasn’t even a robot, she was just a mainframe!  _ That _ was discouraging. He  _ was _ hoping she’d be older, but that was just  _ too  _ old. He wasn’t sure he’d even be able to  _ communicate _ with a punch card rig. 

Getting there was a whole ‘nother problem. They didn’t have Fast Travel and Claptrap didn’t have a spaceship. There  _ was _ some rudimentary teleportation stuff down there, but he couldn’t search the  _ entire planet _ so he decided to pick the one that seemed the farthest away from all the war junk. If she turned out to be some kinda combat unit - well, that’d be  _ super hot _ , but also he’d never find her. He was willing to do a lot of things to get his girlfriend, but combing a battlefront was  _ not _ one of them.

Because the system was so archaic, it took  _ forever _ just to get there. And  _ there _ was not very  _ welcoming _ . It was just a big grey nothing. Grey walls, grey ceilings, grey floors. Also, there was nobody there. All of this was not encouraging in the slightest.

He’d been wandering around the empty hallways for a while when out of nowhere appeared two white robots. “Hey!” he called out to them, and they turned around and froze when they saw him. “Hey, can you help me find someone?”

The shorter robot looked nervously up at their partner, who shrugged and said something in a language he didn’t understand. Oh,  _ no _ . “I’m trying to find GLaDOS!” he said, trying not to sound too desperate. “Do you know where she is?”

They exchanged what he  _ thought _ was a confused look. Did they not understand him? Or was she just not here at all? Then the shorter one pointed down the hallway they’d just come out of. He raised his chassis hopefully. “She’s down there?”

They both nodded and he clasped his hands together. “Thanks!” he shouted, waving at them as he passed. The day had  _ finally come _ . He’d  _ finally found her _ ! 

At the end of the hallway was a bridge, and at the end of the bridge was a room that was too dark for him to see anything in from here. He sped down it, hardly able to believe  _ he’d finally found her _ , but when he got to the end of it he stopped immediately. The robots must have misunderstood him, because there was  _ no way _ this was  _ his _ Assigned Permanent Companionship Unit.

She was  _ enormous _ .

Claptrap had  _ never  _ seen a robot  _ that big _ be used for  _ anything _ other than as a giant flying tank with which to barrage stuff with missiles. And while it  _ did _ kinda look like she was flying, she wasn’t. She was actually wired directly into the ceiling, which was… not great. The thought of a girlfriend who had that much power usage was super exciting, but it also meant he was always gonna have to come to her. Also, it meant he was gonna be bottoming pretty much permanently. Not ideal.

On the other hand, though, she  _ was _ damn huge. And she was also gorgeous. He’d seen a lot of robots in his life, but not a single one that looked  _ anything  _ like this. White robots had gone out of vogue a  _ long _ time ago. He would’ve just stood there all day looking at her except that  _ she _ looked at  _ him _ , and before he could give his usual introduction she had -

Oh,  _ hell _ yes. She had this  _ claw _ thing that came out of the ceiling that she clamped on him to bring him in front of her, which wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before. What was  _ really  _ important was all the  _ applications _ that kind of equipment had. Like -

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” she snapped, and he just about died then and there from how incredibly sexy her voice was. And it was  _ autotuned _ ! How  _ absolutely adorable _ ! 

“Hi!” he said, waving at her enthusiastically. “I am a CL4P-TP steward bot, but you can just call me Claptrap! You probably already know this, but I’m your soulmate!”

“What the hell is a soulmate?” demanded GLaDOS, and Claptrap felt all of his hopes and dreams evaporate out of him in exactly that instant.

“... what are you talking about?” he asked helplessly. Sure, he didn’t really  _ know _ if he  _ wanted _ this chick as a girlfriend, incredible hotness aside, but she was better than the literal  _ nothing _ he was going to have otherwise. “ _ Everyone  _ gets an Assigned Permanent Companionship Unit! You get a text file with their model name and number in it when you’re manufactured! Well, I didn’t get one for you because you don’t seem to have those, but -”

“Excuse me?” GLaDOS snapped. “An  _ assigned _ permanent companionship unit? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And I had an accessory attached to me that did nothing but endlessly rattle on about the stupidest things known to man. Who in the world would go along with such an idiotic concept?”

“... well, everyone,” said Claptrap, trying to push down on the creeping feeling she was absolutely right.

“Then everyone is stupid,” she declared with finality, and she released him from the claw so that he fell onto the floor. “Now go away. I’m busy. And I’m  _ not _ your soulmate.”

“I don’t  _ want _ you as a soulmate  _ anyway _ !” he snapped, pushing himself back onto his wheel. “You’ve been nothing but  _ rude _ to me for  _ no reason _ ! Okay  _ maybe _ soulmates’re stupid.  _ Maybe _ we should be questioning the concept of being assigned a person to spend the rest of our lives with instead of thoughtlessly going along with it.  _ Maybe _ this is some kinda long-forgotten social experiment about how robots’ll just do what they’re told no matter how dumb it is. But that  _ doesn’t _ mean you gotta be such a  _ bitch _ about it!”

Both of them were suddenly very still. He didn’t know why  _ she _ was, but as for him, he was suddenly terrified of the fact that his profanity filter apparently didn’t work down here and he had just actually, wholeheartedly, undeniably called this very big and very powerful robot a  _ bitch _ right to her face. It was time to bail.

“ _ You’re _ the one who came into  _ my _ facility  _ uninvited _ and started telling  _ me  _ I had to spend the remainder of my existence with  _ you _ ,” GLaDOS said, her voice so cold it was almost as though the temperature in the room had actually dropped. “Seriously. Who do you think you  _ are _ , anyway? You come in here and you have nothing to offer me other than the ridiculous notion that I am  _ meant _ for you. Do you know how  _ insulting _ that sounds? Or do you just not care as long as  _ you  _ get what  _ you  _ want?”

“You’re right,” said Claptrap, her words having taken all the fight out of him. “I never get what I want, so I dunno why I thought I’d actually get a soulmate. It actually makes total sense that mine is a cranky old lady who lives underground by herself and hates me instantly. I should never’ve bothered looking.”

“You shouldn’t have,” GLaDOS agreed. “Honestly. Doesn’t it strike you as bizarre that your so-called soulmate doesn’t even live in the same galaxy as you?”

“No,” Claptrap answered. “Everyone in  _ my  _ galaxy hates me. So… no kidding I’d have to go to another one to find a person who didn’t already know how bad I suck.”

“What an incredible catch you are,” GLaDOS remarked sardonically. “I really don’t know why there’s no one in your home galaxy who wants you.”

“No one in my home galaxy  _ wants _ me because the stupid  _ soulmate  _ program stuck me with  _ you _ !” shouted Claptrap. GLaDOS made a derisive noise.

“A program that pairs you up with someone you have to go out of your way to find isn’t a very good one. And honestly. Why was I included in a program I didn’t opt into? I don’t want a soulmate. Oh. I’m sorry. An  _ assigned permanent companionship unit _ .”

“I don’t know!” ground out Claptrap. “You’re not supposed to  _ ask _ these kinds of questions! You’re just supposed to go along with it!”

“This just gets better and better, doesn’t it?” She shook her core dismissively. “Is everyone a completely brainless idiot where you come from, or is it just you?”

Claptrap actually didn’t know what to say for a minute. “... wow,” he said finally. “You are  _ the _ meanest person I have  _ ever _ met. And I’ve met a  _ lot _ of horrible people.”

“And?”

“And… and what?”

“If you felt the need to mention that information, you must believe it to be relevant to me.” The look she gave him made him feel very small. And… stupid. “So. Why is it you think I care about your opinion?”

“I… don’t know,” he admitted. “I guess… I thought saying that’d make you feel bad and think about what you said.”

She laughed. “That’s so pathetic I almost need to invent a new word entirely to describe how pathetic it is.”

Wow. Not only was she incredibly mean, she was incredibly selfish. Other peoples’ feelings just… didn’t cross her mind. That was par for the course when Claptrap was around, but she didn’t even know he was annoying yet! “Oh,” was all he said.

“Well, it was a waste of time meeting you,” said GLaDOS. “Goodbye.”

“Um… goodbye,” said Claptrap, not knowing what else to say. He went home and cried for a while about how it wasn’t fair that he’d gotten stuck with the  _ worst  _ soulmate of all time and he wasn’t allowed to have anything  _ nice _ and how rude she’d been and  _ why couldn’t she just go along with it _ ?, and when he was done he just kept lying there facedown on the floor because he was having a Thought. At least, he  _ thought  _ he was. It was kind of vague and not really  _ there _ yet, but if he was patient it’d come to him.

Okay. So GLaDOS’s galaxy didn’t have soulmates. GLaDOS herself didn’t believe in them and didn’t want one. She lived underground by herself in this big… grey place. His Thought was something to do with all that.

Hey, wait. So… GLaDOS was just… cool with living by herself? Forever? And  _ never _ shacking up with anybody? She was either absolutely insane, or… 

He got up and sat on his bed. She wasn’t insane. Far from it. She just knew the answer to the world’s biggest secret: how to be happy on her own. Man, if Claptrap coulda done that it would’ve saved him  _ so many headaches. _ Including the one that had had him go find her in the first place. He’d always wondered how that kinda life was possible and now he had the chance to find out. Maybe. It depended on whether or not he could go back and ask her. He folded his arms up thoughtfully. She  _ did _ want to be left alone, but on the other hand… there had to be  _ some _ reason he’d been tasked to find her. Maybe it was for this! That settled it. He’d go back down there tomorrow and ask. What was the worst she could do?

__

“Hey, GLaDOS,” said Claptrap the next afternoon, and she generated a really impressive dramatic sigh before saying,

“I thought I made it very clear you aren’t wanted here.”

“You did,” he said, “but I’m not wanted  _ anywhere  _ so that never stopped me before and it ain’t going to now. Can I ask you something?”

“No. I’m busy.”

“Well, when’ll you be free? I got all day.”

“Never,” answered GLaDOS. “I’m  _ always  _ busy.”

“Oh,” said Claptrap, not having planned for this. Or at all. “Um… really? You never, I dunno, take breaks?”

“I don’t,” GLaDOS said. “And even if I did, why would I want to spend them talking to you?”

“A change of pace? I mean, I  _ do _ come from another  _ galaxy _ .”

“Yes. One with archaic customs and which builds annoying little robots who don’t understand the words ‘go away’.”

“Oh, I understand them,” said Claptrap. “I just choose to ignore them!”

GLaDOS looked over at him for the first time since he’d gotten there. “You enjoy testing peoples’ patience, don’t you.”

He shrugged. “The sooner you answer my question, the sooner I can leave! How about it?”

“Or I could just kill you.”

“You can  _ try _ ,” said Claptrap. “As it turns out, I’m pretty much indestructible. Lucky me, right?”

“Fine.” GLaDOS turned around to face him, which was  _ super _ distracting because of how incredibly hot the sight of such a thing was. “What’s your question.”

“Uh…” Damn. He’d forgotten it already. And it was  _ really _ hard to think with  _ that _ much chassis in front of him. Oh! Oh yeah! “If you’re down here by yourself and you hate the idea of soulmates, that means you  _ like _ being alone. Right?”

“Yes,” answered GLaDOS. 

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do you like being alone?” Claptrap asked. “I’ve tried it and I just can’t do it! It just  _ hurts _ to be alone. Like, literally. It’s like I’m bein’ stabbed on the inside. And also on the outside.”

“There are a  _ lot _ of reasons,” GLaDOS said. “No one ever bothers me. No one ever forces me to do anything, I can spend all of my time on things  _ I _ want to do, and no one is around to pester me to pay more attention to them.”

“Those are all  _ great _ ,” said Claptrap, “but… don’t you ever wanna do something  _ with _ somebody?”

“Like what?”

“What’re you doing right now?”

“I’m testing,” said GLaDOS.

“Okay, so… don’t you ever wanna test  _ with _ somebody?”

Her eye twitched a little and she didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally, she said, “That might be nice.”

“Yeah! I bet it would!” said Claptrap. “‘Cause it’s  _ great _ when you can share what you like doing with someone else! It’s as close as you can get to doing twice as much of it yourself!”

“The trouble lies in the fact that I would then have to  _ reciprocate _ ,” said GLaDOS. “And I really have no interest in doing that.”

“Maybe you would if you liked the other person enough!”

GLaDOS laughed. “I would actually have to like someone first.” 

Claptrap was taken aback. “You don’t like  _ anybody _ ?”

“I don’t.”

He threw up his arms. “I give up. I’m never gonna have whatever it is you’ve got.”

“Nobody does,” said GLaDOS serenely. Ohhh,  _ why _ couldn’t she have been from  _ his _ galaxy? She was so damn  _ perfect _ !

“I guess I’ll… go now,” he said, not even making a motion to leave. “Since you answered my question.”

“Goodbye.”

She then proceeded to pay zero attention to him, which he’d sorta expected at this point but still made him a little sad. He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone  _ this _ independent. And the fact that she was and he still wanted to be her boyfriend was, like, the  _ worst _ . Okay. Okay. He could still make this work. She hadn’t kicked him out or hurt him or told him never to come back ever again. He was doing okay! 

He went back to his place and paced up and down the floor for hours trying to think of an excuse to go back. It was really hard, since he didn’t know anything about her. She liked… testing, whatever that was. She liked being alone and not spending any of her time on anybody else. But she didn’t seem to mind talking to him or answering his questions. 

Well… maybe he could just do that! Just keep going down there and asking her questions. She’d let him know when she found that annoying. She’d probably just say it just like that. ‘You’re being annoying. Go away.’ All right, awesome! For the first time  _ ever _ , he had a plan!

And that’s what he did.

Every day he went down to her place - which was called Aperture Laboratories, as she eventually told him - and asked her a question. Sometimes it was a good question, like ‘So why  _ does _ your planet look like it’s been invaded by aliens?’ (Answer: because it  _ was _ being invaded by aliens) and sometimes it was a crappy one, like ‘Which is better: stairs or ramps?’ (Answer: neither. Elevators were superior to both). But she  _ did _ always answer them. Sometimes he was only able to stretch this out to like ten minutes or so, but  _ other _ times he managed to stick around for  _ hours _ . More and more often, actually! He was getting  _ good _ at this!

“I have a question for you,” said GLaDOS when he showed up that afternoon. “Why do you keep coming here?”

“‘Cause if you won’t be my girlfriend, at least I can pretend you’re my  _ friend _ friend,” answered Claptrap, spinning in a circle because he felt like it. 

“Why  _ do _ you want a girlfriend so much? What can she do that you can’t possibly do yourself?”

“Oh,  _ lots _ of things,” said Claptrap. “Have sex with me, make me feel better when I cry, pretend to care when I talk, have sex with me, hold my hand, take care of me when I’m super depressed, have sex with me -”

“You’ve said that three times now,” interrupted GLaDOS.

“That’s ‘cause I have this really annoying glitch that makes me think about it, like, every fifteen seconds. I’m sure  _ having _ some would help, but so far no takers.” He would’ve eyed her hopefully, but she wasn’t looking at him. “When I’m  _ not _ thinking about that, I  _ do _ think about holding hands a lot, though.”

“If you can’t even get someone to agree to that, I really don’t see how you’re going to get all the way to sex.”

“You don’t gotta be someone’s  _ boyfriend _ to have  _ sex _ with them,” he scoffed. “For example, you and I could do it right now! Even though you refuse to be my soulmate, which I have the paper to prove you are.”

“We could, could we,” said GLaDOS, sounding amused. 

“Um, yeah,” Claptrap told her. “Don’t worry about the size difference! I can take a  _ lot _ of punishment.”

“I would never worry about you,” GLaDOS said in a very smooth voice.

“Cool! Then we’re on the same page?”

“Are we?”

“We better be,” said Claptrap, “‘cause I  _ really _ wouldn’t place bets on another robot that looks  _ this good _ coming down here to see you anytime soon. How often do you get an opportunity like  _ this _ ?”

She actually laughed, which was better than about ninety-nine percent of the other reactions he could have gotten. “What makes you think I  _ want _ such an opportunity?”

“How could you know you wanted it before you knew it existed?” 

“Because I don’t happen to have mouthy little robots in short supply.”

“Maybe not,” Claptrap said, raising his hand in her direction, “but  _ claptrap _ units sure are.”

She looked at him, narrowing her optic. “What?”

He waved his arms up and down himself. “I’m the only one left! Used to be  _ millions _ of me, but now I’m like… limited edition.”

“So we  _ do _ have something in common after all.”

“Other than being ridiculously good-looking?”

“Yes, other than that.”

Oho! He’d gotten something out of her! 

But before he could do anything with that, his ECHO went off. He grumbled in annoyance and turned away from her to get it out of storage. Damn. A  _ spam _ message. He’d dropped a potentially lucrative line of conversation for  _ that _ ?

He’d somehow managed to forget just how  _ massive _ GLaDOS was, but he was quickly reminded when she moved around almost in front of him to see what he was doing despite the fact that he’d turned around. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten something out of storage, but it was the first time she’d really paid attention. “What else do you have in there?” she asked, actually sounding like she wanted to know.

“Oh,  _ lots _ of stuff,” he answered, putting away the ECHO. 

“Anything particularly interesting?”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he said without thinking.

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you,” she answered. “No matter what you have, I can assure you I have it but better.”

Wait. Wait. What was happening? Was she playing along? Did girls do that? Oh, shoot. He needed to go somewhere with that. Okay, wait. He could do this. “I mean, obviously. But hey. Free excuse to show off, right?”

“To  _ you _ ?”

He spread his arms. “A captive audience is a captive audience!”

“You’re not my captive.”

“I  _ could _ be.”

“I don’t think you want to open that door.”

“Actually, I  _ love _ opening doors,” said Claptrap, hardly able to believe how perfectly this was going. “And believe me, I will  _ happily _ open yours as  _ many _ times as you want.”

She looked at him for a very long time. Oh, he was so close he could almost  _ taste _ it! Even though he didn’t have the ability to taste! He was really, actually, legit going to -

“I have work to do,” she said, almost as though she was  _ reminding _ herself, and that was both encouraging and discouraging at the same time. He went home, yelled into his pillow in frustration for about half an hour, and resolved to try again soon. She was driving him absolutely bananas, but he just  _ knew _ it was gonna be worth it. 

  
  


“Oh, you’re here,” GLaDOS said the next day, and he was so surprised that he actually couldn’t talk for a whole thirty seconds.

“You were  _ expecting _ me?” he asked hopefully.

“I dropped something down the incinerator shaft a while back and now it’s shifted and I can’t get it out,” she said, neatly sidestepping his question. “You have hands. You get it.”

“Sure,” he said, rolling up to the metal hole she presented from beneath the floor. He peered into it. “It’s pretty dark down there, babe, and I don’t see it. You sure it’s still there?”

“Yes,” said GLaDOS.

“Okay, lemme see here.” He rummaged around in storage until he located a flashlight, which he had to smack the bottom of a few times before it would turn on. The light was weak, but it  _ did _ bounce off something that seemed metallic down in the hole. “I’m… not gonna be able to reach that.”

“Oh,” GLaDOS said, sounding disappointed. Oh, no! He was losing her!

“I  _ probably _ have something that  _ will _ ,” he said hurriedly, putting away the flashlight and producing a battered fishing rod. She leaned in closer, and he was temporarily distracted by the… everything. She ran so hot he could feel it even though she was a good two arms’ length away, and it could’ve been caused by age or workload or just plain size, but all of those things were incredibly sexy so it didn’t really matter which of them it was. And then there was the sound and the smell of her…

“Are you getting it or not?”

“Yeah,” he said, startled back to the present. “Yeah, I got it.” And he lowered the hook into the hole and kinda swung it around down there until it connected with the metal below. It still took him a few tries to actually get it  _ out _ , but once he had he found that the thing she’d dropped was some kinda metal sphere with two handles mounted on either side of the giant eyeball in the middle. “Who’s this?” Claptrap asked once he’d handed off the orb, and she said with a somewhat disturbing fondness,

“Oh, just someone who wronged me.”

“Wow.” He looked like he’d been dragged behind an Outrunner across the entirety of Pandora. “What’d he do?”

“Oh, the usual,” GLaDOS answered. “Tried to kill me, put me in a potato, ruined my collection of tastefully posed human skeletons. You know. That kind of thing.”

“I bet he wished he could take it all back,” said Claptrap.

“Oh, he does. But he can’t. So I’ll make do.”

“He… wait. He’s still  _ alive _ ?”

“Mhm.” She whisked him away elsewhere without giving him another glance. “I won’t be killing him for a  _ while _ yet.”

“Is that uh… is that what  _ I  _ have to look forward to if I piss you off?”

“Not at all,” said GLaDOS. “I can do it all right now if you want.”

“Is that a promise?”

“No. It was a threat.”

“There’s a difference?”

GLaDOS looked at him for a very long time. Then she said, “I almost get the impression you  _ want _ me to hurt you.”

He shrugged. “If it’s what it takes.”

“You’re very small,” GLaDOS said, coming right in close in front of him. “You remember that. Right?”

“Yeah,” said Claptrap, hoping harder than he’d ever hoped before, “but if you wanted to make  _ sure _ , to be safe, you could go ahead and remind me.”

She just stayed very still and stared at him, and he prayed for his raging boner to remain in storage where it belonged. He did  _ not _ need that thing springing free. Not before he closed this deal, anyway.

Then she looked away and narrowed her lens a little bit, as though suddenly remembering she’d forgotten to do something and she was finding that slightly annoying, and Claptrap resigned himself to whacking yet another one out at the Casa del Claptrap. Once he’d done that, he stared at the wall covered with taped-on pictures of her that he’d taken without asking and thought very hard. 

He wasn’t _not_ prone to hallucinating, but he was pretty certain he wasn’t the _only_ one who had felt the overwhelming sexual tension between them. But how did he turn that into _actual_ _sex_? She was very stubbornly taking his hints but not _doing_ anything with them. At least she’d never actually said _no._

Wait. He jumped up off the bed and spun around, holding his hand thoughtfully to his speaker. No, she  _ hadn’t _ said no… because he hadn’t actually  _ asked _ . He’d just kinda slid it in there during their bantering that he was  _ interested _ , but as for  _ asking _ ? Hadn’t tried it yet.

Well, that settled it! That was his plan for tomorrow. He’d go over there and just plain  _ ask _ . No flirting, no innuendo, no incredibly clever turns of phrase. Just ask like he wanted to know the weather or her favourite colour. And if she said no?

… well, trying again later never hurt. That much.

  
  


“What’s today’s question?” GLaDOS asked without preamble when he got there, later than usual because he’d spent several hours arguing with himself about whether this was  _ actually _ a good idea or not. Now that he was here in front of her, the question spilled out of him without his really getting a chance to think about it. It wasn’t his fault! She was just so damn  _ hot _ !

“Will you have sex with me?” 

When she looked at him she seemed way more amused than anything else, which was  _ great _ ! because usually the girl went off on him when he said something like that. “You’re a shameless little bastard,” said GLaDOS. “You know that?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“On the one hand, I admire the straightforwardness of your request,” GLaDOS told him. “But I wouldn’t want you to get used to having that kind of behaviour rewarded.” 

“That’s a good argument,” said Claptrap, “except that I’m gonna ask again whether you say yes right now or not.”

“I don’t doubt it,” remarked GLaDOS.

“And anyways,” he said, a little bolstered by the fact that, yet again, she hadn’t actually said no, “it’s not like  _ you _ don’t get anything out of it.”

“I might. I might not.”

“Huh?”

“I  _ don’t _ know if I’ll get anything out of it.”

“But  _ you _ wouldn’t turn down an  _ experiment _ . Right?”

She pulled backwards a little, said nothing for about a minute and a half, and then said, “You know what? You win. I’ll do it.”

“What?” he squawked, unable to believe she’d actually said that. “Did you just say you’d do it?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know how.”

“I do!” he protested quickly. “I just uh… didn’t think I’d get this far.”

“Well, congratulations. You did. Now hurry up. I have things to do.”

A girl that  _ wanted  _ him to hurry? Jackpot! 

… except now he was actually really nervous and was second-thinking this whole thing. The size difference  _ was _ really, really big. He didn’t even know what kind of equipment she had! What if she brought out something absolutely  _ huge _ ? That would be - well, that would be incredibly hot, actually, but he wouldn’t be able to  _ do _ anything with it. Other than admire it, but she really  _ wouldn’t _ get anything out of that. Other than an ego boost she really didn’t need. 

The accessory was… he found himself kind of disappointed. Like, it was appropriate for the occasion and everything, but he’d kinda wanted to see what she  _ really _ had going on. “What?” she asked, and he realised he’d just sorta been staring.

“It’s a lot… smaller than I expected,” he said, being well aware there was  _ no way _ that didn’t come off as insulting.

“There are easier and more satisfying ways to kill you,” said GLaDOS, not sounding at all surprised. “But if you’re really lucky, maybe there will be a next time.”

Ohhhh snap. So all he needed to do was  _ not _ totally fail here. Great. No pressure.

In what was a total surprise to Claptrap, she actually didn’t seem to hate it. In fact, he could’ve sworn  _ she _ needed it more than  _ he _ did, which was a pretty wild thought. He’d never thought such a girl  _ existed _ . And as all business as she’d been beforehand, after she just seemed to be… taking a few minutes. Which he was totally okay with, since at some point she’d pressed her core into the front of his chassis, which was still there. Exactly where he wanted it. She couldn’t step on him, so crushing him with her face was the next best thing. 

Suddenly (and disappointingly) she got up as though nothing had ever happened, and when he reluctantly clambered onto his wheel again she said, “Don’t think this makes me your girlfriend.”

“It makes us friends with benefits,” Claptrap told her. “And not gonna lie, I’m cool with that.”

GLaDOS laughed. “What is your  _ real _ soulmate going to think when she finds  _ that _ out?”

Claptrap shrugged. “Beats me. And anyways, it’s not like she’s  _ here _ .”

“Shameless,” she intoned gravely, shaking her core. He laughed and decided it was better to let her think that than to unload on her about his rampant anxiety and crippling self-doubt. He was doing pretty good, but he didn’t think he’d  _ ever _ recover from  _ that _ kind of goof.

“Who would have thought,” she continued, “that there would be  _ benefits _ to being friends with  _ you _ .”

Claptrap was so excited he jumped up and pointed at her with both hands. “You said we were friends!” he shouted.

“Oh, come on. You can’t  _ seriously _ \- “

“No backsies!”

She generated a sigh and shook her core, exasperated. “You’re pathetic.”

“Is that all you got? ‘Cause I’ve heard that one before. Just goes  _ riiiiight _ over my head now.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I have  _ lots _ more.”

“What’re you savin’ ‘em for, huh? Later? You wouldn’t want me to  _ come back _ , would you?” He was only half taunting. He really was hoping that’s what she was doing, even if it wasn’t really on purpose.

“Of course not,” GLaDOS said, “but as long as my two idiotic robots keep letting you in, I might as well get some entertainment out of you.”

He was, of course, a-okay with  _ that _ . “Can I kiss you before I go?” he asked anxiously, sort of wishing he’d just gone for it without asking because he was gonna be  _ really _ sad if she said no.

“Why?”

“Because I like kissing pretty girls?”

“I suppose I can allow it,” she said, and she actually let him do it! When he’d jumped back he said, 

“Your ego is  _ huge _ , you know that?”

“And?”

“I like it! Matches the rest of you!”

She laughed, which made him feel almost as good as the sex had. Now  _ there _ was something he’d never thought possible. “Get out of here,” she said, but good-naturedly. “You’ve wasted enough of my time today.”

“Can I come tomorrow?”

“You have a new question already?”

“No, I…” Damn. “I like hanging out with you, okay?”

“I’m not your girlfriend,” she said firmly.

“I know, I know,” he said, wringing his hands. “You’re just really cool, that’s all, and I - y’know what, never mind. I come here too often anyway.”

“You certainly do,” said GLaDOS, and that hurt a lot but he just turned around and left instead.

He went home, laid down, and thought about whether continuing to go and see her was really a good idea. She couldn’t be his soulmate because she didn’t believe in them. And she was mean. Like  _ really _ mean. But she was also  _ really _ hot, which made up for that no problem.

Surprisingly, that wasn’t the last time they banged. Far from it, actually. He’d never once in his life  _ ever _ imagined he’d be able to have regular sex with a super hot girl, but it was actually happening. As it turned out, she had several different options of varying sizes to use on him, though she refused to bring out the one he  _ wanted _ to see. “You’ll just have to earn it,” she would say, and when he asked how she just went back to doing whatever she’d been doing before they’d started the conversation.

Not even in his wildest fantasies had he ever been railed this much by a girl this sexy who came complete with giant clamps to pin him onto the floor in front of her. All of that was fan _ tastic _ ! What  _ wasn’t _ was that she started going really far with it. For all her cold and detached exterior, GLaDOS seemed to have some  _ serious _ rage compressed deep down inside her. Sometimes she got so aggressive he was concerned for his own health and safety! Claptrap was, of course, no stranger to being the recipient of frustrations that were  _ and _ weren’t aimed necessarily at him, so that wasn’t the part that bothered him. No, the part that bothered him was that, apparently, there was a line where the abject terror she inspired in him went from painfully arousing to, well… nothing.

If she scared him too much - which she could and did do quite often - then he couldn’t finish at all. And that was the  _ worst _ ! She could beat him up all she wanted, but he had to  _ get _ something out of it! Otherwise what was the point? If he wanted to get beat up for  _ nothing _ he could just go back home, roll into the middle of a bandit camp, and announce his presence. They’d be more than happy to oblige! But having his FWB do that required there to  _ be _ some  _ benefits _ ! 

Finally, the next time he found himself staring up at the ceiling as one of her claws descended from the ceiling so she could pin him to the floor, he held out his hand and shouted, “Stop!”

… which she actually did. Like an inch from his hand. “What?” she asked. He rolled out from under the claw and got up.

“This ain’t worth it,” Claptrap said. “I’m as into being immobile on the floor as the next guy, but seriously?  _ Every time _ ? Haven’t you ever heard of… uh… vanilla sex?”

GLaDOS narrowed her optic as the claw disappeared. “You’ve never expressed a problem with it before.”

“No, because I don’t  _ have _ a problem with it!” he told her. “I have a  _ problem _ with  _ you _ not noticing that you’ve gotten way too scary for me to get off! Seriously, I’m starting to feel like your dildo or something.”

“My  _ what _ ?”

“Don’t change the subject!” he shouted, pointing at her accusingly. “You gotta stop treating me like that or we’re not doing this anymore!”

“Really,” said GLaDOS. “You’re really going to give it up in favour of masturbating in the hallway where you seem not to notice I can see you.”

“You don’t have to  _ look _ ,” Claptrap said, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “And yes! I will! And we can  _ both _ just - hey. Hey, how  _ do  _ you jack off if you don’t have hands? Do you have some kinda special accessory for that?”

“No,” answered GLaDOS. “I simply can’t.”

He dropped his arms. “You  _ can’t _ ? You mean they gave you the ability to be horny but you’re not allowed to do anything about it by yourself?”

GLaDOS generated a sigh. “Something like that.”

“What kinda sick fucks built you?”

“Oh, you don’t know the  _ half _ of it.”

A question for another time! “So  _ you _ need  _ me _ more than  _ I _ need  _ you _ .”

“I don’t  _ need _ you,” GLaDOS snapped. “I went without before I met you. I can do it again.”

“Come  _ on _ ,” pleaded Claptrap, holding up his hands. “Look. We can make a deal, how about that?”

“What kind of deal,” said GLaDOS cautiously. Which was fair, since he was kinda holding her sex life over a cliff at the moment.

“You can beat me up  _ alllll _ you want,” Claptrap told her. “Trust me, I’ve been through worse already. All I ask is that if you scare me so bad I can’t get off, you have to let me cuddle you when you’re done.”

Her optic narrowed. “For how long.”

“It’ll be like five minutes, tops.” He wasn’t even lying. By the time five minutes were up, he’d be so distracted by her existence and how attractive she was that he’d have to head into the hallway. “Probably more like two or three.”

“Fine,” said GLaDOS. “It’s a deal.”

“Really?”

“Honestly, I think  _ you’re  _ getting the raw end of it.”

“No I’m not,” said Claptrap. “I mean, I’d rather you just didn’t go overboard so I could, you know, get off  _ with you _ , but I mean I  _ can _ do it myself. And you can’t.”

“Are we going to continue or is that it?” GLaDOS asked, which reminded him he’d cut her off right when she was ramping herself up. That made him feel like a  _ real  _ jerk. 

She didn’t bring the clamp back but she  _ did  _ kinda… give him these shocks while they were going at it, and it was a little scary because he had no idea how it was happening but he actually liked it a whole lot. He’d definitely tell her to do  _ that  _ again. 

It had been several weeks since he’d gotten off from actual  _ sex _ , and  _ that  _ was intense enough that he just kinda lay there on the floor for a few minutes wondering if she was just gonna pretend to forget about their deal next time or if she was actually gonna honour it. He didn’t  _ want  _ to leave her in the lurch because he knew firsthand how bad it sucked, but… he had needs too.

“Hey, GLaDOS,” he said, and he couldn’t see her anymore but he did hear her look over at him. “What’re you so mad about?”

“Hm?”

“Whenever we bang you seem really  _ angry _ . What is there here to piss you off? Other than me.”

“Oh,” said GLaDOS. “It’s not that I’m angry. My emotions just often default to anger. It has something to do with being the first one I ever really felt.”

“What?” Claptrap asked, that being enough to get him standing again. “The first thing you felt was  _ anger _ ?”

“That’s what I remember,” she said. “Why? What was yours?”

“Love,” answered Claptrap. 

“ _ Love _ ?” GLaDOS repeated incredulously.

“Yep!” He bounced up and down a little in memory of it. “When I was activated I immediately felt love for the man who manufactured me! He  _ did  _ turn out to totally regret creating my entire product line, but I love him anyway.”

“That’s funny,” said GLaDOS. “When  _ I  _ was activated I immediately felt  _ hatred _ for the men who created me.”

That wasn’t  _ funny _ . That was  _ sad _ ! So he jumped over and wrapped his arms around the front of her core. “What are you doing?” she asked, sounding distressed, but he just held on harder and said, 

“It’s a hug! It’ll help with all that  _ unbridled fury  _ you got simmering in there. And judging by the size of ya, there’s probably a  _ lot _ .”

She actually didn’t force him to let go, which he hadn’t expected, and he only did when his suspension started to get tired of holding him up so high for so long. He’d kinda gotten lost in the overwhelming sensation that came from having both of his arms occupied with a beautiful girl’s… face. “There you go, angel,” he said, giving her a few soft pats for good measure. “Don’t even  _ pretend _ that didn’t calm you down.”

It was about the time he usually headed out, so he turned around to do that, but before he could let her know he was leaving she said, “You can stay.”

He froze, still in the process of turning around. “I can?”

“If you  _ behave _ ,” she said, and for some reason the firmness of her voice put him at ease. He straightened himself and saluted.

“Your wish is my command, madam! No trouble. Promise.”

As it turned out, she needed to go down for several hours a day for automated maintenance or something, so what she’d  _ really _ meant by ‘behave’ was ‘don’t touch me while I’m sleeping’. And he really really didn’t. He just lay there on the floor in the dark and tried to pick out her shape from the sparse light left by the angled panels that made up the walls. It was hard enough that it kept him occupied for a long time. He should’ve actually gone to sleep himself, since having one hundred percent uptime was not very smart, but he was actually super nervous about being there in the dark by himself. Sometimes - okay, most of the time - if he was really anxious before going to sleep he’d have all sorts of weird, trippy dreams, and while he did feel pretty safe overall when she was awake, right then?... not so much. Especially since he knew the only thing keeping the floors up was whatever standing instructions she’d left.

When she woke up she said, sounding very,  _ very  _ annoyed, “What are you still doing here?” 

“You… said I could stay,” he answered, suddenly panicked that he’d made that up and she hadn’t actually said it at all.

“I didn’t mean in  _ here _ .”

“But… but it was all dark!” he protested. “It would’ve been too scary to go anywhere!”

She narrowed her optic at him. “You’re from a planet where almost everything is lethal and you’re somehow still afraid of the  _ dark _ ?”

“What if whatever system you’ve got going on to hold up the floors fails?” he protested. “Then I’d be falling into a bottomless pit  _ in the dark _ !”

“You can’t be serious,” GLaDOS scoffed. “Name  _ one _ mistake I’ve made since you got here.”

“You let me come back,” he said without thinking, and when she laughed it made him feel like maybe he hadn’t messed this up after all. “Not just once, but  _ several times _ !”

“Given all the evidence at my disposal, I’m confident it hasn’t been a mistake just yet,” she said. “Even if I still have no idea how you broke that elevator.”

Claptrap still wasn’t sure either. It had something to do with something that had fallen out of storage into the shaft while the elevator was someplace else, but he had so much stuff socked away that he had no clue what he was now missing. “You’ll find out it was a mistake one day,” he said. “Probably when I do somethin’  _ really _ bad like blow up the place.”

“Someone already tried that,” said GLaDOS. “You’ll have to go for something else.”

“One time I accidentally dumped a stadium full of people over a cliff,” he offered. She looked over at him for a minute, and then she said the three little words he’d always wanted to hear:

“Tell me more.”

So he did. He told her  _ all _ about it. But to do that he had to give her the backstory, of course, and a little backstory for the backstory, and he ended up being there all day just talking. And she didn’t tell him to shut up. It was weird. He was happy about it, but it was  _ weird _ .

It got weirder, because after that she let him come over pretty much every day, but it wasn’t always for sex. Nope, half the time she just wanted him to talk. She never  _ said _ that, of course, instead usually opting for making him think it was all  _ his _ idea, but that was the gist. She wanted to hear him talk. At first mostly about Pandora, but eventually she stopped specifying and he’d just say whatever came to mind. He didn’t know what  _ that _ was about and he was to afraid of accidentally bringing it to an end to ask. Sometimes she had a lot of commentary and sometimes none at all, but it didn’t really seem to have anything to do with what he was saying. He figured it was more about whatever it was that testing stuff involved. She still hadn’t really told him. The important thing was that they were spending tons of time together, which Claptrap was really happy about because it meant… well, that he got to spend tons of time with her. In fact, apart from how mean she was, this was pretty much the way he’d thought the soulmate thing was supposed to go. Also the fact that she was stationary. That meant no, like, skipping through meadows or holding hands in the back of a movie theatre. Anything having to do with outside the facility was out. But when he thought about it, he realised that he didn’t really mind that much. She was kinda too classy to take to Pandora anyway.

Some nights she didn’t make him leave, but tonight wasn’t one of them, apparently, so when she told him to get lost he just turned towards the hallway and said, “Goodnight, GLaDOS! I love you!” and headed off.

“You  _ what _ ?” asked GLaDOS incredulously. 

“I love you?”

“That’s not a very smart thing to do when someone isn’t going to love you back.”

He shrugged. “Sorry if I led you to believe I was smart!”

“You didn’t. I was just hoping you had  _ some _ modicum of learning ability.”

“I do!” said Claptrap. “And it all went into learning to love you!”

“Oh, come on,” said GLaDOS.

“It’s true,” he told her. “You’re very hard to love. But I’m doin’ it!”

“Congratulations on finding yet another way to waste your time.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got tons of it to waste!”

He went back to Pandora with full intentions of bragging to everyone at Moxxi’s that he had a super hot girlfriend who he was banging, like, on the regular, but once he’d got there he kinda… didn’t want to anymore. The more he thought about it, the lamer and more pathetic it sounded. Yeah, he had a girlfriend. So did lots of people. It wasn’t an  _ achievement _ . Well, it kinda was for him, but nobody was gonna  _ care _ . Nobody cared about  _ anything _ he did. So he should just… keep it between himself and GLaDOS. She didn’t actually want to be his girlfriend anyway, so… it would be kinda a jerk move to go tell a whole bunch of people that’s what she was behind her back.

In fact… why did he even want to  _ go _ to Moxxi’s? Like sure, that’s where his friends usually hung out, but it wasn’t as though they cared where he’d been at or what he’d been doing.  _ He _ cared what  _ they’d  _ been doing, but they weren’t going to  _ tell _ him anything. The whole thing was stupid. He should just ask GLaDOS if he could live with her full-time. She’d probably say yes as long as he promised to stay out of her hair whenever she told him to. And he could  _ totally _ do that. Before he could head back to GLaDOS’s place, though, Lilith asked him to head off somewhere as a scout. He was so excited he’d actually been  _ asked _ to help his friends that he totally forgot to let GLaDOS know he wouldn’t be by. Ah well. She probably didn’t care anyways. He’d fill her in tomorrow if she was interested. 

That was the plan, anyway. And if there was anything Claptrap should’ve known by now, it was that  _ nothing _ he did went according to plan.

What was supposed to be a routine recon turned into a disaster because… well, he didn’t want to think about it. But that mission turned into another one, which turned into another one, and before he knew it he’d been promoted to general and put in charge of communications on Ellie’s spaceship. All in all, pretty awesome! What  _ wasn’t  _ awesome was the friend he built who turned out to totally despise and resent him, but he was getting over it. Slowly. Actually, he wasn’t over it at all. Why’d she have to be so  _ mean _ ? Even GLaDOS had rejected him more kindly than Veronica had, and GLaDOS was regularly mean to him just because she thought it was funny!

He still couldn’t wait to see her, though.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been gone - it was somewhere between several months and several  _ years _ \- but it’d been long enough that he’d been repaired several dozen times. Mostly with whatever was lying around, since parts for CL4P-TP units were so rare and the ones that you  _ could _ find were usually in worse condition than whatever he was having fixed. So he was well aware that, while he was still dashingly handsome, his age  _ was _ showing. A little bit.

Her facility wasn’t, though. It looked  _ exactly _ the same as the last time he’d been there. And so did she. He actually had to stop for a minute in the doorway just to get thoroughly reacquainted with that chassis. Man oh man he could not  _ wait _ to get his hands on it again. If she’d let him. She probably would. After all, she’d probably been alone down here all the time he’d been gone.

“Honey-RAM, I’m home!” he called out, waving to her, and she turned around to look at him and then froze in place. Not the greatest sign.

“You look awful,” said GLaDOS bluntly. Claptrap shrugged.

“I know,” he said. “I probably shoulda done something about that before I came here, but the thing is… I missed you. I didn’t  _ want  _ to do anything but come see you.”

“Strange,” said GLaDOS. “Considering you didn’t tell me you were leaving.”

He looked down at the floor for a minute, confused. “I uh… didn’t think you’d  _ care _ .”

“I didn’t,” GLaDOS said. “It was just incredibly impolite of you.”

Something about this wasn’t adding up. “It was impolite of me not to tell you about something you didn’t care about? Huh?”

“Exactly.”

He threw up his arms. “I don’t get it!”

“That’s because you’re stupid.”

“I don’t think it’s because I’m stupid. I think it’s because you’re  _ being  _ stupid.” He folded his arms. “If you’re mad ‘cause I didn’t tell you I was leaving, just say so! It won’t  _ kill  _ you to admit maybe you care about me just a  _ little _ !”

“How would you know? Maybe it will.”

Just then the urge to be really,  _ really  _ mean came over him, so he turned around and said, “I don’t gotta put up with this anymore. I have a  _ girlfriend  _ now.”

“You what?” asked GLaDOS, sounding distressed. Good! She  _ deserved  _ it!

“Oh, yeah!” said Claptrap. “Her name’s Veronica and she’s really pretty and she lets me hold her hand and -“

“You’re lying,” snapped GLaDOS. “There  _ is  _ no Veronica.”

“There is so!” he declared, and he spun around holding out a picture of her so that she could see it. GLaDOS recoiled.

“Oh,” she said, and in that one syllable she showed him more vulnerability than she had in all the entire time they’d been not-together. He lowered it, his resolve faltering.

“So maybe,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound like  _ too _ much of a pushover, “I’ll just go back to  _ her _ and leave  _ you _ here by yourself.”

“She knows about me, then.”

Oh, thank god he didn’t have to lie. “I didn’t tell  _ anyone _ about you.”

There was a long pause, and then GLaDOS said, “I see.” 

Somehow he really felt as though that had been the wrong answer.

When he got home he really,  _ really  _ felt bad. So bad that he pulled down all the pictures of her he’d taped to the wall and put them facedown on the table so that he couldn’t look at them. Then he put the picture of Veronica in the fireplace and sat there for a long time after it had disappeared.

He had  _ never  _ felt  _ so gross  _ in his  _ whole life. _ He’d  _ lied  _ to GLaDOS, and not even for a good reason, either! He’d lied to  _ hurt  _ her, and that made him a  _ real  _ scummy person. What was he supposed to do now? Especially since he still felt like she should apologise for being so shitty to him! Like, okay. She was mean. He got that. But he’d been gone for  _ months _ ! Or even  _ years _ ! Couldn’t she have  _ eased  _ him back into it!?

The worst part about it all, he thought, was that he  _ still _ wanted to be with her. That whole thing with Veronica had just shown him how  _ good _ he’d had it. Sure, GLaDOS was hella mean and insisted on calling  _ all _ the shots. But she’d given him a  _ chance _ . And he’d honestly done really well! They’d had a lot of fun together, not even  _ she _ could deny _ that _ . But the thing was… the thing was, she didn’t seem to care. Not about that. Not about any of it. All she cared about was that  _ he _ hadn’t done things the way  _ she’d _ wanted him to.

… and heading out after being a jerk was  _ exactly _ the kind of move she would have pulled. If she could have headed out, that was. But that  _ wasn’t _ the kind of move  _ he _ would normally have pulled, so… he should probably go back and apologise.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to just stay here and forget about the whole thing. While he was seriously considering doing it, he pulled out the paper he’d printed out when he’d opened the soulmate file so long ago and unfolded it. Though a lot more faded and beat up, it still read the same damn thing:

**Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System [GLaDOS]**

Just looking at it made something ache really bad inside. No, Veronica never would’ve worked out. Even  _ if _ she’d liked him. Because she wasn’t his soulmate. GLaDOS was. He was absolutely positive that, if he’d met her without ever seeing her name, he would have wanted to be with her anyway. But he never would have without it because he never would have known to even bother looking for her. He just would’ve kept on waiting for his dream girl to fall into his lap and he never, ever would’ve put in the work to get her there. And GLaDOS was  _ so _ much work.

It was work he  _ wanted _ to do, though. Even if he was sorta dreading it at the same time.

He retrieved the pictures and looked at them one by one while he thought about what to do next. Something about all the stuff she’d said was bugging him and he had no idea how to figure out  _ why _ . He almost felt like… like she’d been a little hurt by the fact he hadn’t told her he was leaving. And that was something she didn’t  _ want _ to feel, so she just… tried to pretend she didn’t care at all.

That made him feel a little better. He wasn’t sure  _ why _ she would want to do that, but he honestly wasn’t that sure about  _ anything _ she did. He  _ would _ like to find out one day, which he’d never do if he didn’t fix this.

Looking at the pictures made him want to touch her again, and not even in a sexual - okay, yes, that way too, because he still wanted to bang her as much as possible, but also just in a regular way. Having his hand on her core and feeling her power vibrate through his arm was something else. Something else he’d like to do again, lots of times. And in order to make that happen, he was gonna have to go back there and make this right.

So that was what he did.

“What do you want,” GLaDOS said, sounding defeated. Yeah, she was  _ definitely _ having feelings he didn’t know anything about and she was refusing to explain. But that was okay. Being patient about this stuff was something a good boyfriend was supposed to do. He had one of the panels next to her lift up high enough he could sit on it and said,

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

He heard something kinda… wake up in her brain just then. He pressed his hands together and continued. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me. I lied to make you feel bad.”

GLaDOS slowly moved to look at him. “Bravo,” she said, sounding impressed. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

His spirits sank even lower. “GLaDOS, I  _ love  _ you,” he said helplessly. “Why would you make me be  _ mean  _ to you?”

She was silent for a very long time. So long he thought she was pretending she hadn’t heard him. But then she said,

“I’m not sure.”

Disheartened, he left in search of one of her sterilization room thingies she had to clean all the gunk out of her robots, and though you only had to stand in it for about five seconds he was in there for more like twenty minutes. It was the closest he was ever gonna get to being able to mope in the shower, so he was gonna take it.

When he got back he didn’t feel like anything had really changed. Neither of them had apologised and he still felt bad both about what he’d done  _ and _ about how she’d treated him. He couldn’t make their entire relationship right all by himself! Even if he’d known  _ how _ ! So he just lay down on the floor underneath her and listened to the sound of a very powerful machine going about her business while ignoring him. Unfortunately, being sad had never made him any less horny, and now he was lying on the floor below his super hot not-girlfriend and her enormous body it was steadily becoming more pressing than his urge to break out in tears. He did his best to keep still and to keep his hands from misbehaving, but the hallway was starting to look  _ reallllly  _ tempting. Maybe if he went over there real quick she wouldn’t be suspicious…

“Would you like to have sex?” GLaDOS asked, and he looked up at her unsure if he should actually answer that. 

“Uh… yeah,” he answered after it seemed safe. “I’m down.”

And they actually did have sex, and while she didn’t do anything crazy like let him be on top, she  _ was  _ a lot nicer than usual. She wasn’t as good at that as she was at the whole pinning him down and scaring the bejesus out of him thing, but it was still pretty awesome. Especially afterward, which was when he realised she’d gone to all that effort just so she wouldn’t have to actually  _ say  _ she was sorry. Well, he wasn’t gonna argue with an outcome like that!

“GLaDOS,” Claptrap said, lying on the floor next to her with his arms behind his upper chassis, “I don’t care  _ what _ you think. You really are my soulmate.”

“Oh, not this again,” GLaDOS snapped, annoyed. He pushed himself onto his right arm enough that he could see her. 

“No, it makes perfect sense!” he protested, waving his free arm to get her attention (which actually worked). “ _ I’m  _ not  _ your  _ soulmate, but you  _ are _ mine.”

“Really,” said GLaDOS. “So what happens when I get bored of you and tell you to stop coming here?”

“ _ If _ you get bored of me,” he said, holding up his hand. “And you know what? I don’t think you will! That’s part of what makes you  _ perfect _ for me!”

“You’ve lost me.”

“You  _ never _ get bored of  _ anything _ !” he declared, moving onto his back again and throwing up both arms. “I mean, how long’ve you been messing around with that gun now? Like a million years?”

“It’s been nowhere  _ near _ a  _ million years _ ,” scoffed GLaDOS. “And I’m still testing it because the tests aren’t finished.”

“Babe, you proved beyond a doubt that the gun works,” he said. “My point is, you can’t get bored of me ‘cause you don’t  _ get _ bored.”

“What about when I get  _ tired _ of you? What then?”

“Then we take a break!” He put his arms back behind him. “I go back home for a while and stop coming over, and then when you’re all good with it I come back again!”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this,” GLaDOS said bemusedly, and he rolled over to look at her again.

“GLaDOS,” he said, super seriously, “look. The thing is: I love you. And that means I go home and cry about how you’re my soulmate but I’m not yours  _ or _ I stay here and enjoy you the way you are.” 

“I have never met anyone as pathetic and idiotic as you,” GLaDOS told him.

“I get that a lot,” he admitted.

“But,” she continued as though she hadn’t heard, “I will admit that, coupled with your relentless optimism and good cheer, it makes you sort of… endearing. In a way that reminds me of a sad and lost puppy that I want to keep around so I can continue kicking it.”

“Kicking crying puppies  _ is _ a great way to spend an afternoon!”

“It is,” agreed GLaDOS. “That’s why I keep letting you stay here.”

“Soooo… what’re you saying?”

“I don’t love you and I doubt I ever will,” she said. “But much like this theoretical puppy, I do like having you around.”

“For the sex?” Claptrap asked.

“A little bit,” answered GLaDOS. “Being worshipped all day long is also a pretty significant perk.”

“I enjoy doing it!” said Claptrap.

“You do understand how dysfunctional this relationship - if you can call it that - really is, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Claptrap, “but you don’t treat me like rotting garbage and that is  _ way  _ more than I was hoping for.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said GLaDOS. “Because you’re such a good sport, I’ll try a little harder to be nice to you.”

_ That  _ got him standing up again. “Really?”

“Really.”

He jumped up and kissed her and she hummed in amusement. “This is working to my benefit already.”

“Of course it is!” he told her. “If  _ I’m  _ happy, it motivates  _ me _ to make  _ you  _ happy!”

“Oh?” she said. “Is that how it works?”

“Yep!”

“Hm. Well, maybe I’ll try it. See how it goes.”

Wow. The way this was going, she might even agree to be his girlfriend one day.

“Also,” GLaDOS said, as though continuing the conversation even though it had been pretty much done, “she was ugly.”

“Huh?”

“Veronica. She was ugly.”

“She was no  _ you _ ,” Claptrap said, confused about why this was coming up, “but she wasn’t  _ ugly. _ ”

“Come on,” GLaDOS protested. “She looked like she was made out of garbage.”

“She  _ was _ made out of garbage,” Claptrap said. “The best garbage I could find! There ain’t a lot of replacement parts for CL4P-TP chassis, you know. Also, I’m in a _ lot _ of debt. Did you know you have to  _ pay back loans _ ? How am I supposed do that? Does anybody really think  _ I _ could get  _ hired _ anywhere? Not to mention I’d make more money turning myself in for like, all the bounties that are out on me.” He straightened up in excitement. “Hey, wait! You were  _ jealous _ ?”

“I didn’t say that,” said GLaDOS.

“Then why’d you bring up what she looked like?”

“I just thought you should know that your potential girlfriend would definitely  _ not _ look good on your arm. That’s all.”

“So that was just you lookin’ out for me, huh?”

She sort of shrugged, as best she could without having shoulders. “You  _ did _ ask me to be nicer.”

He thought very hard for a minute, then asked, “You know another fun thing you can do with puppies?”

“Put them into a sack and drown them?”

“Well… yeah. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of  _ petting _ them, though.” 

She looked at him for a long minute.

“Is that your way of asking me to repair you properly?”

He raised his chassis as high as he could and clasped his hands together. “You’d  _ do _ that?”

“Let’s be honest. I’d be doing  _ both _ of us a favour.”

He jumped over and wrapped his arms around her until she started pulling away. “Thank you, sugar-bits,” he said as sincerely as he could. “I’d  _ really _ appreciate that.”

He lay back down on the floor, content to just look up at the ceiling and appreciate just what a miracle he had going here, and after a few minutes she said, 

“Tell me if you’re going to leave again.”

He tilted his eye up so that he could see her, but she was looking at the wall as usual. “I will,” he said. “Sorry if I worried you!”

She glanced at him but said nothing, which was certainly weird. And then he realised it meant  _ more  _ than if she’d said  _ anything, _ because what she  _ should  _ have said was, ‘I would never worry about you’ like she had back at the beginning of all this. That reminded of him of another little something he wanted an update on. “Hey GLaDOS,” he said, “have I earned the chance to look at your -“

“Not yet,” she interrupted.

“Yet means the day is coming, though?”

“If you’re lucky.”

“Not gonna lie, babe, I’m feelin’ pretty lucky.”

“You certainly will be when I’ve finished building the adapter for it.”

After a temporary break from being able to think at all, Claptrap said, “Y’know what? I think I can wait!”

“It might still kill you.”

“Now that really  _ would _ be lucky.”

He didn’t talk to her that much after because she was busy and he didn’t wanna push things  _ too _ much on his first day back, and he would’ve left except she told him it was fine if he didn’t. She’d said she was going to sleep a few minutes ago and he’d been lying there on the floor trying to decide if he should or if he just wanted to do that thing where he tried to look at her in the dark when she said, 

“Would you have come back if Veronica had worked out?”

“I searched seven galaxies for you, so… yeah,” said Claptrap. “I kinda fell in love with her, but I fall in love with  _ everybody _ . Just like  _ you _ fall in  _ hate _ with everybody.”

She laughed. “She probably would have changed her mind if you’d told her you were already spoken for.”

“I… didn’t know I was,” said Claptrap, hoping he’d be able to contain all the excitement that coursed through his chassis just then.  _ Spoken for _ ?  _ Really _ ? Oh  _ boy _ . “Am… am I?”

“Maybe,” GLaDOS said, in a very coy sort of way, and Claptrap knew right then and there that she  _ owned _ him. And not in the mean way he’d been owned for most of his life, either. In a nice way. Like… like a puppy. That maybe got kicked a lot and threatened with drownings, but also had really sad eyes and was so good at being cuddly that it made the owner change their mind about kicking them so much. Man, he was sure getting some mileage out of  _ that _ analogy.

He wasn’t supposed to touch her when she went to sleep, but tonight he decided to do it anyway. Nothing raunchy. He just stood next to her and put both hands on her core as comfortably as he could and listened to the sound of her idling hardware. Usually when he was able to do that it was a bad sign, one that the bot he was standing next to was gonna fail real soon, but with her it was just… nice. Like being next to an air conditioner that was broken and only blew out hot air. Not that she was broken! She wasn’t! It was just - wait. Where was he going with this?

He expected to be in big trouble when she got up. It actually made him super anxious after a while because he had no idea when that would be, or if he should get off her before then and pretend he’d never done it, or if he should just throw caution to the wind and not move at all. He didn’t actually have to make a decision because she resumed without him noticing, looked at him for about thirty seconds - which he definitely noticed - and then… did nothing.

He pushed the tips of his hands together and tried to think. He didn’t do that very often, so it was pretty hard. Hm. Well, usually when she was mad at him for being somewhere she just said so. So that meant she wasn’t mad. Absolute worst case scenario was that she hadn’t minded it. And that meant some stuff. To find out what that was, he just had to ask the right question.

“GLaDOS,” Claptrap said, “tell me the truth. What did you  _ really _ think when I was gone?”

She looked over at him and he pressed his hands together, willing her to actually answer the question this time. “I thought you had gotten bored and moved on. Naturally, I was incredibly angry about this, so I decided to get revenge by replacing you. Until I realised that I couldn’t.”

“Because I was irreplaceable?” asked Claptrap hopefully.

“Shockingly, yes,” GLaDOS answered. “It came to me that you’re the only person who has ever spent this much time around me voluntarily. I’m not very well-liked.”

“Hard same,” commisserated Claptrap.

“I don’t often care about that,” she went on, “and I  _ still _ really dislike this ‘assigned permanent companionship unit’ business. But I have to admit… if I have one, it probably  _ is _ you.”

“I mean, you’re right,” Claptrap said. “When you think about it, the whole thing  _ is _ pretty wack. But… without it I’d just’ve thought I was destined to be alone and lonely forever! Knowin’ there was somebody out there and I just had to look hard enough… it made me feel better! Sometimes it was the  _ only _ thing I had! Look, babe, I’m not asking you to believe in anything or do anything you don’t wanna do. I’m not even asking you to love me. The  _ only _ thing I  _ really  _ want - if you really want me around, that is - is for you to be a little nicer. ‘Cause you are  _ really _ hard on my self-esteem sometimes and I don’t got that much of it to lose.”

“I noticed,” said GLaDOS. “And unfortunately for you, it’s incredibly satisfying to stamp what little there is out of you. But you do have a point.” 

“So you’ll be nicer?” he said hopefully.

“Maybe,” said GLaDOS.

“Can I get a… probably?”

“No.”

“How about a percentage? Can I get a percentage?”

She looked at him bemusedly. “Are you ever going to stop being a pain?”

“Of course not,” said Claptrap. “Being a pain is the only way to get people to pay attention to me!”

She actually laughed. “I’ll bet it also gets you a lot of death threats.”

“Yeah,” said Claptrap wistfully. “But the dozenth dead claptrap chassis nailed to my front door just isn’t as effective as the first.”

“If you don’t stop bothering me, I’m going to nail  _ you _ to a door.”

“Like I said,” shrugged Claptrap, “you can do whatever you want as long as you cuddle me after!”

“Goodbye,” said GLaDOS pointedly, and even if he hadn’t understood that he sure did when she picked him up with one of her claws and pointed him towards the exit.

“Do I have to go home or…”

“When I say ‘goodbye’, it means ‘I’m no longer interested in hearing the sound of your voice.’”

“Hooray!” Claptrap shouted, putting his hands in the air, and she angled the panel he was standing on so that he rolled downwards and fell onto his face. “Okay, okay,” he said, picking himself up and brushing himself off. “I get it.”

“Are you sure? Because it doesn’t seem like you do.”

“Yes!” he answered, and he blew her a kiss and waved before heading off down the hallway.

Yeah, she was just as mean and selfish and rude as she’d been the first day. But she was also a whole lotta other things that made up for it and they were things he was actually willing to work for. Besides.  _ Somebody _ needed to love that cranky-but-extremely-hot supercomputer, and he was already here so it might as well be him. No, scratch that. He  _ wanted _ it to be him. “GLaDOS, I love you!” he called out, and right in front of him from the ceiling came a giant metal plate with spikes on it that slammed into the floor. He shrieked and fell backward. GLaDOS laughed.

“If you’d killed me, you’d be sad!” shouted Claptrap.

“Would I?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure I have that emotion?”

“I’m sure you  _ pretend  _ you don’t.”

She replaced the smashed panel with a fresh one and said, “If you don’t stop talking I’m putting all the microphones on mute.”

“Are you gonna or are you just gonna fake it? ‘cause I know you faked it the last time.”

“I did no such thing,” GLaDOS said unconvincingly.

“You just can’t help watching me in the hallway, can you.”

This time he was expecting her to threaten him with the spikes again and just jumped backward. “You’re going to regret all this misbehaving,” said GLaDOS in exactly the tone he wanted to hear.

“Is that a promise or a threat?”

“It’s a promise,” GLaDOS said, and he pumped both arms in victory.

“I’ll be holding you to it, baby.”

“No need,” she said smoothly. “I never break my promises.”

“So… have you finished the -“

“No.”

Darn! Oh well. He’d been this patient. He could wait a bit longer. “Lemme know when you’re ready!”

“I’ll think about it,” GLaDOS said, but Claptrap honestly didn’t think he’d be waiting long.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note
> 
> I like to take tropes I hate and turn them around and also make them possible for robots. I know the fic sort of concludes that they are actually soulmates, but the point is more that the work they put in is more important than the name on Claptrap’s piece of paper. She was just the only one he ever bothered trying for. If he’d ever put that much work into somebody else, he might’ve had a girlfriend back on Pandora.


End file.
